Smart line!

My goal is to be a failure. If I try and fail, I'll still be successful!

-Anonymous SMS!

My Epithet!

Way back, years ago, for some reason, I was scanning the dictionary (as strange a habit as that sounds) to learn some new words, I chanced upon this word: 'epithet'
I even saw some smart ones quoted!

For a long while after that, once in a while though, the questions would come back to me, with no philosophical bent, as if asking myself if I could pen a smart one myself!

I think I had started to read this book by Stephen Hawking: A brief history of time, and suddenly, due to some randomly ordered connection of nerve endings, a smart line struck my mind....

It read: "Wake me up when you find the end of the universe!"

That famous 5 point someone!

Just finished reading the book called '5 Point Someone'!

Got reminded of Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the kind of roaring laughter that I paid for, along with the cost of that book!

I was led in by some of my friends who said that it was a true story, and was pretty much like the part of his biography at IIT.

Good uncomplicated, easy writing style nevertheless, that adds to the narrative.

Read it if you want to walk down memory lane and revisit those college days!

Adios!

Working up your creative side!

What's your key to get your creative side worked up?? Ever experienced a rush of thoughts and the clear lucid flow of words?

this is how I have managed to do it at times:

> compete with a friend for an unsaid, unplanned one liner competition!

> write an amusing e-mail to staff or your team! the idea is to make them laugh

> flirt over chat! (for a mutual fun factor only, of course)
(watch your limits though!)

> think of an plot for a small comedy story (5 - 10 pager).

> And sometines, just writing whatever comes to mind........COMPLETE uninhibited flow, you just let your mind control you. This way, I've written about my opinions about creativity and innovation and some current issues.

Good News!!

Way to go!



Consortium plans computer kiosks for rural India!

I'd like to thank the people involved in this project and hope they have worked out all the practical difficulties. Will try to find out more about them. Let me see if I can help in any small way!

Semantic Dictionary...

I wonder how well this could be used for personalization:

Build a database of all possible meaningful relations between any 2 words in the English Language.

How could we apply these relations to make sense of huge lengths of text?

Opportunities for unskilled people?

Have been doing a lot of interviews of late, and one thing that keeps coming back to mind, considering the ratio of number of rejects to the number of hires!

Most of the time, the candidates are not skilled enough. It may be due to their previous specialization in a particular aspect/technology, but most lack in general skills.

I talked to this one guy who gave excellent answers to most technical questions, but could hardly manage to speak. I had to bring out the answers from him.

He had the ability to understand things, to break it up into parts, what it meant, where it could be used, but he just could not put it out in words coherently.

I told him that he had to improve on his soft skills and be able to converse freely to be able to be given due credit to him.

On another note, I think of the best colleges - they turn out some of the brightest people; or do they? More often than not, the students already have the innate abilities and are actually pretty bright. The college brings together a lot of such people, bright in their own way and set an informal learning ground for them to just start building upon one another. That's the primary reason, if you ask me, and the credit is due there.

So, coming back, why questions is this: Who really is responsible for improving or providing help to people who have only a strong urge and willingness or the strong urge and also a latent capability to improve, but haven't reached their true potential because of the lack of resources or awareness or encouragement at the right times in their past?

Somehow, at least at a minute level, I want to be a part of this complicated answer.
You could help one or two persons, but the numbers needing help are huge.

I assume this to be a macro level issue, and one that continents like africa really are trying to address (or at least what the international community wants us to believe).

With the new delivery platforms and their accompanying social changes brought about by the advancements in technology, I hope there will be a feasible solution to this in the near future.

Anyone interested? I am trying to build a community of like minded people who want to to help lesser privileged people using automated systems, rather than F2F one time interactions.

And, this is pretty much a relative term, all of us are lesser privileged to information, to the exposure than what we could have, to relevant information out there, that could help us do our job better, whatever it may be, to some extent.

I know it would be a slow, painful, long journey, but that's why it has to be a group effort, rather than just one.

What would I have done if I had a chance to do it all over again?

Watched the movie "The Butterfly Effect" last weekend. Great movie, if you can bear with it for the first 20 minutes.

On a slightly different note though, just as a fun thing to do, what would I do if I had the choice of doing it all over again, with the same cognizance and the awareness that I now carry due to the cumulative effect of my reading, exposure, observations of people and the world around me?

My natural answer would be that I would have taken up something in science/psychology/economics/product design(of mechanical nature)/journalism, or a mix of a few of these, although combinations sound absurd!

And yeah, I wonder what my answer would be, if I'd ask myself the same question then!

Strikes a chord?

Of late, this quote from Mick Jagger comes back to mind often.....has a lot of meaning, although unsure about what he originally intended!

It's alright to let yourself go, as long as you can get yourself back!

Comment! At least the Internet gives you the right of free speech...

Feel free to leave comments on the posts on my blog. Feels good to know opinions on different things....

Notifications of posts to groups....

Notifying a set of people (a group id) on e-mail about new posts on my blog should be possible.
Is there someone out there doing it already, apart from having to subscribe to RSS feeds through an aggregator?

anyone listening? Darn! Search engines can't comment, just as yet? (Actually thinking about it, wouldn't that be cool???)

Delicious, Isn't it?

A free online Bookmark service, that also tells you who else is reading the same articles as you are! Here it is.......http://del.icio.us/

Personalization Potential...

Had an interesting conversation with an avid blogger and a friend about what personalization can do for you and against you.....

Ever thought about it? Would you want to use GooglePC bundled with GBrowser through GoogleISP and trust Google or any other company with all your data, where they manage the show for you?

Would you rate privacy concerns above benefits derived from new, innovative personalized software?

Mull over it! it's not too distant in the future!!!

Interesting Speculation on the Apple Intel combine...

Check he, Cringely, speculating on the Apple Intel Combine....

And remember, you saw it here second......

:)

MIT plans $100 laptop!

Whoa! What a steal, under design with support from Google, AMD and others....
More apart from the above Discovery Link...here.

For a complete lowdown on the current world of Blogs

As this Business Week Column goes:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up...or catch you later
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Here's the link: Blogs Will Change Your Business

How RSS and Aggregators will change the definition of the browser and the internet...

Back in the late 90's, when the number of internet users started to double every month, a lot of people had experimented with the 'PUSH' technology, v the traditional 'PULL' approach, meaning, that content on the web be brought to the user, without he/she having to go look up numerous websites to get the information one was seeking for; one simply needed to get connected to the internet, open their browser and information flow would begin. All the content from various 'channels' would be routed to this client as and when it was published, and the client software would then automatically refresh every 15 minutes or so, to show new content to the browser.

A lot of websites and tools on the web still use this technology from back then, but it never got towards becoming a rage.

In the next couple of years, services like Moreover.com started to appear that helped developers syndicate news from a news provider and use it for consumption on any client.

Enter current day, and now we have a few sites supporting what's known as RSS (Really Simple Syndication). This will help you subscribe to fresh content updates from any of your chosen content providers (News sites, finance updates to even your favorite blogs...yes, blogs) to be delivered to your desktop, using a tool called an 'Aggregator'.

A simple tool could look like Outlook Express with the content providers listed on one side and new feeds that look like mails sent to you being shown in the main pane.

Another refinement could be a tool that pretty much looks like your browser, but allows you to choose where you want to see what, ending up to look like a personal home page.

Well, so far so straight forward, huh? So, why so much noise about this????

Because, in the days to come, the browsers will make way for aggregators aka the personal web page, making the use of browsers redundant for pure consumption of information.

Aggregators still have to go a long way, and the one to beat the market with the best model, will win the battle for the new age and may even emerge to be the next 'Google' story, while Google is working on pushing Ads also through RSS feeds, along with the required content.

The data that Aggregators collect can tell us more about a person than what Amazon can tell about you. Now, do you see a business case? Personalized Marketing will become a reality. Companies end up spending much lesser on their marketing efforts, while still being able to achieve a higher conversion ratio.

Of course, there are severe privacy issues to contend with, and users can choose to let their data be used to fine tune their personalization.

There are several other uses of the aggregator, one prominent use could be for rural education and dispersal of valuable information. I will write about this use in another post.